Brothers - a treatise dictated from a ditch by L McCoy, MD, PhD
by HeronS
Summary: "Sometimes I hear people say that I'm not really angry at Spock. That it's all a facade. It's not a facade. Sometimes I really hate his guts." Trapped in a difficult situation, McCoy ruminates on the most irritating and impossible being in existence. His brother (not by choice!) Spock. This fic contains references to implied self harm and an OC death - nothing graphic.


**Brothers - a treatise dictated from a ditch by L. McCoy, MD, PhD.**

Alright. Yes. Fine.

Spock of Vulcan is my brother.

And I don't like to say _like a brother to me,_ because to me that implies some sort of choice in the matter, and there damned well was no point where I got to make a choice.

And mark my words, I don't mean it in the way that Jim does. That's all about deep connections, unconditional trust and, well, love.

No, I mean brother as when my baby brother Rick stole my hoverer and my best synthileather jacket to go on that insane quest to win back what's her name and then totaled the thing outside Paris after she dumped him again, and _then_ having the _nerve_ to wake _me_ up in the middle of the night to get me to come and get him from a ditch somewhere across the Atlantic and of course I did dammit and of course I held him but don't you think for a second that I wasn't mad as hell.

That kind.

So maybe it is a little bit about love. But if so it isn't one of the four kinds that Plato and Lewis discusses. Because I've heard people - and by people I mean uppity nurses who clearly don't have enough things to do - say that when I try to shout some sense into him, well, they say that I'm not really mad. Not really.

That it's just all a facade.

It's not a facade.

I really hate his guts sometimes .

Well. Maybe hate is a strong word. I'd like to think that I don't really hate anyone.

But you wouldn't believe the kind of things he gets away with on this ship. Reschedules his immunoanalysis for three months running and then goes and gets himself poisoned on some fool ass unnecessary mission to talk to some barbarian tribe who really, really don't want to talk to us - and by the great bird I told them so, told him so, but did they listen? Oh no, why would anyone listen to me, I just got myself a degree in xenopsychology from the Mars Institute because of the funny hats.

Anyway. Where was I?

Right! Poisoned. And who has to fix that, with no recent immunoanalysis scan and a whole blasted moon worth of toxic plants? If it hadn't been for Jim wrestling the information out of their chieftain and me having ten kinds of luck in the lab all through the night, he might have been dead.

Dead...

I still remember the way the blood had crusted along his chin, like red fingerpaint, that dazed look... No. No, that's Rick. Sorry, I need to get my hand on detox pills somehow. Getting all mixed up.

And when Spock did finally wake up in sickbay, all he had eyes for was the captain. And Jim was so relieved that I couldn't very well start to shout at the fool Vulcan there and then. Had to stand there and just watch as they quietly said a lot of things that in reality meant completely different things, and where's the logic in that, I ask you?

Oh he did thank me, you know. He'll do things like that, once in a blue moon. Let himself truly feel that human blood of his, and then he can say things - quiet, serious, genuine things and while I'm usually not very good at thinking up a response to that then and there, it's not like I don't feel it. It's not like I don't wish I couldn't just cuff him and wrap him up in a bear hug like I could with Rick... It's not like I don't get what Jim sees in him.

But then, you know, when I once again fall for that spell that half the crew seems to be under, and think that here's this good man, this truly brilliant man, the embodiment of the (few) Vulcan virtues that intersect with our plain old human ones… Then he goes and reprograms his biobed to the specifications he thinks should be the norms, turns Christine's head around to discharge him and then sneaks out of sickbay. All in those four (4!) hours that's all the sleep I get for those two days.

And everyone else smiles and my blood just boils.

You know, I wouldn't be on his ass about it if he truly didn't have any emotions. If he truly couldn't understand us humans. Or if emotions really hurt him. But he does have them and yes, they do hurt, of course they do, but it's nothing compared to the goddamn agony he goes through when he tries to excise them, cut them off like some psychological tumor. I'm sure of that. And I don't care if it's xenophobic, and I don't care if it's disrespectful to the noble Vulcan disciplines because I know far too well systematic self-harm when I see it, and I don't care if it's flesh or emotions that he is cutting away, I simply won't stand for it and while there is breath in me I'll never stop trying to make him see reason. I couldn't help Rick in the end but I'll be damned if I...

Damned.

...No of course I've never written that diagnosis down. Does it look like I'm objective and without-a-doubt-medically-sound about this? About him?

I may be a maudlin, angry drunk but don't you ever take me for a fool.

It's just... I know he could be so much more.

It's plain as daylight that if I can just keep him alive through this five year mission, Spock is going to be a force in the galaxy for the next few centuries. A mover and shaker. Scientist, sure, but a statesman as well. And you know, even now he can be a great leader sometimes. When he eases down his blasted controls and lets himself feel what those scared kids around him needs, what he needs. But then he gets embarrassed and battens down the hatches and becomes this stiff logical walking computer instead, and I want to strangle him because usually at this point the world is ending and I really need him to be more than that.

Take his daddy, the ambassador. Is that what Spock is going to be like in another half century? Now Sarek, he has that serenity that Spock is desperately searching for. But at what cost? I don't doubt that Sarek could stand by and watch millions get slaughtered because of the prime directive or some other vaunted principle. All without batting an eye. And this might be xenophobic for real, but that scares the crap out of me. On Earth we call that benign psychopathology, and here are these aliens that want to raise it to a virtue? I'm not going to lose Spock to that without a fight.

Isn't it funny. On the one hand you have me, convinced that all Spock needs to be happy and content and reach his full potential is to listen more to his human side. And on the other hand you've got Sarek thinking the same thing, but about his Vulcan side.

Maybe it's good that he has Amanda and Jim there in the middle, just being supportive of whatever he chooses to do and be.

Maybe.

But that doesn't mean that I'm wrong, blast it.

I'm not wrong.

I don't get why our resident genius still listens to Sarek the way he does... All Sarek had to do was apologize - in that Vulcan non-apology way - and Spock let's him right back in.

Or.. I guess I do know why and it's as simple as it is damning. He's like Jim (oh he's so much like Jim, God help me and both of them) in that for him the motivation for an act sometimes matters even more than the consequences of it. And if you don't trust my analysis skills right now and maybe you shouldn't because I'm a bit too drunk, just a bit, then he said so himself just the other week.

I'd blown up on him quite badly after those casualties came in, you see, and it wasn't what he deserved at all. So once I finally got out of surgery, I went to apologize. Because that's what my momma taught me. And he would really have been justified to give me the full Vulcan iceberg treatment because some of the things I had said… No, it wasn't right. It was downright cruel and I was deeply ashamed. But he just shrugged it off, said that the cause was sufficient, and then pulled rank and said that unless I went and got some sleep he'd conspire with M'Benga and Jim to have me kicked out of my own sickbay. Can you believe the nerve of the man?

So, anyways, as long as there's moral principle, or affection and concern, underlying the actions of others, Spock's prepared to excuse an astonishing amount of things. And here's a scandalous secret for you about the high and mighty first family of Vulcan. For all that he at most cultivates a patient tolerance for the rest of the galaxy, Sarek of Vulcan loves his impossible son fiercely.

But that's just me and that xenopsychology degree talking again, so don't let that distract you.

He has this martyr-savior complex you know, and I've seen the fear that someday we might lose him to it in Jim's eyes. And we've all taken oaths about sacrifice so we can't really argue about it, Jim certainly can't. Me, I try every once in awhile and then things usually get really ugly.

...Yeah. Shut it. I know I have to keep talking. It's been what, fifteen minutes and I'm still conscious so the concussion can't be that bad. And he'll be here soon. But I'll keep talking.

On that note, you'd better delete everything I've said between now and the crash from your hard drive. He's my patient, and I happen to put a great deal of stock in doctor patient confidentiality. And it's taken years to get him to trust me on that, so I'm not likely to risk it, even being half delirious with a bird-brained first aid AI.

Things got a bit bad between us after he nearly died in the _plak tow_ , because of that. The plain fact that he didn't trust me enough to come tell me about the fever. That he'd rather risk death and madness than come to me. Jim will forgive and forget almost anything given some honest repentance, as I've said, but I… I had a hard time with that. I'm his physician. And I don't mean just on this posting - I'll always be his doctor. I'm stuck with him and he with me, because at this point there is no one who knows as much about his hybrid physiology as I do. I had to do some hard thinking after that sordid affair on Vulcan - I'd been convinced that no matter how much we fought, he'd still always come to me if it was really important. And I'd clearly been wrong about that.

I vacillated between being mad as hell at him and at myself.

I signed his primary care over to M'Benga there for a while, figured that no matter whose fault it is, when your patient would rather die than entrust themselves to you, you have to remove yourself from the equation.

Spock didn't like that one bit, though, and we were all out of sync so we couldn't really find a good time and place to work it out. Jim finally had enough and stuck us on a mission together with a thinly veiled threat to work it out, or else.

We did work it out, of course. We always do. It's just damned hard work - everything is hard work with him. Like it was with Rick, come to think of it. You know, Rick didn't even speak to me for two years after I divorced Jocelyn and signed up for the Academy…

Spock and Jim are so synced. It's like a bloody dance, like there's a silent music somewhere just out of my earshot with a complicated but steady beat. I certainly don't hear it. Half the time when I try to say something nice to the hobgoblin we end up shouting at each other, feels like.

I wonder what he'll say now. He'll probably go passive aggressive Vulcan control.

You shouldn't even be able to get this hurt in a hoverer accident, no matter if you're drunk. It's just bad luck, the autonav systems failing like that. What idiot built this hoverer anyway? You can't trust rentals. I should have known.

Or maybe I actually scared him when I called, not that you'd know from that curt efficiency. I hope not. I didn't want this weekend to end like this. It's just that it's eight years to the day since Rick died and I really needed to be alone in a place where nobody knew my name and the booze was as harsh as the moonshine we used to make together as teenagers back in Georgia.

I couldn't call Jim, not with him having lost his brother Sam on Deneva just last year. I couldn't. I've just gotten him back up after that.

So Spock is all I have right now to come and get me. I don't want strangers to know. Could bear the scolding, but not the sympathy. And sympathy is not something I'll get from Spock, that's for sure.

At least I hope not. I couldn't handle that right now. I just want to go back home to the Enterprise, do a quick neuroscan, take a few detox pills and then sleep.

The worst part is over. That was earlier today, at the bar out in the middle of nowhere, when I was all alone in the universe. That feeling was worse than even the shock of the crash. And as soon as the smoke cleared and I got the stupid system to get Spock on the line, it was as if a weight had been lifted from my chest. Now I only had to wait a little while, and everything would be ok.

That's a shuttle engine! Finally! What did he have to do, go and build it himself? Anyway - you just go and delete this long rant from your system, you miserable little tin can.

Delete, delete, delete. I'm going home.

 **Author's note: Thanks for reading! I love comments, if you have the time, and I do accept anonymous comments.**

 **Just to repeat the note from the beginning: McCoy is an unreliable narrator for several reasons in this fic and can exaggerate quite a bit and also (gasp) be wrong, so if you find yourself not agreeing with him, it might be because of that.**

 **I hope you found him his usual frustrating, lovable and exasperating self. :)**


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